12 Dec County Has ‘Work to Do’ to Identify Latino Trafficking Survivors, Staff Says

The members of a Contra Costa County anti-human trafficking team (from left: Marla Stuart, Employment and Human Services Department; Katrina Natale, Anti-Human Trafficking Taskforce; Kimberly Baker, services program manager; Corinna Espino, Commercially Sexually Exploited Children/Youth program; and Melody Saint-Saens, division manager) appeared at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. (Screenshot by Samantha Kennedy / The CC Pulse)

By Samantha Kennedy

Contra Costa County youth are more likely to be victims of commercial sex exploitation if they are Black or live in East County, which has some of the county’s largest concentrations of Black residents, in line with state and national trends. But county staff says it needs to do more work to identify Latino youth survivors of sexual and labor exploitation.

According to 2024 data from the county, only 1% of youth identified were Latino, despite making up 27% of the county’s population. Nationally, various studies show Latinos make up around one-fifth to one-half of victims, depending on the type of exploitation.

“(The data) should be closer to 10% or 12% if it’s following the national average. We have work to do as it relates to identifying child labor trafficking, and we’re doing that work,” said Corinna Espino, coordinator of the Commercially Sexually Exploited Children/Youth program, at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting during an anti-human trafficking presentation.

Espino said county staff and other partners and organizations will soon attend a symposium that will specifically address how to identify survivors.

Survivors of labor exploitation have frequently been found to be Latino; many are immigrants from Latin American countries. Cases reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline showed that 63% of exploitation in landscaping involved men from Mexico, and 83% of survivors in construction are immigrants, mostly from Mexico and El Salvador.

Latino representation in the county’s youth data was almost the same as in 2023. But Black survivors saw a 4% decline, and white survivors increased by 2%.

Katrina Natale, director of the county’s human trafficking task force, said it works with several partners that offer culturally competent resources to increase outreach to certain communities.

“We’ve also looked into enhancing our outreach to cultural identity organizations … in the case of labor trafficking and the Latino community, (that could be) farmworkers’ groups,” said Natale, adding that it included spaces such as churches.

Organizations like MISSSEY already work with the task force to offer services specifically for Black women and girls in Richmond, like the RYSE Center. Other groups, like the 23rd Street Corridor Working Group, also focus their efforts on a particular area.

Black and white youth account for most identified cases of sex exploitation in the county, with Black youth being overrepresented in the data. Thirty-nine percent of cases are Black youth. Race or ethnicity was not given for another 21%.

District 1 Supervisor John Gioia, who initiated the conversation about Latino survivors being underrepresented, said he wanted to know the “best way we understand who we are serving.”

“That will at least give us some indication of how effective that outreach (staff is) talking about,” Gioia said. “Are we really effective at meeting people where they are at?”

Marla Stuart, director of the Employment and Human Services Department, said that collecting data actually “deters their willingness to work with us,” but said they had convened a committee to see how data could safely be collected and reported.

The National Human Trafficking Hotline can be reached at (888) 373-7888, and you can find additional resources on the county’s website.